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MySQL - Troubleshooting Replication
If you have followed the instructions, and your replication setup is not working, first elliminate the user error factor by
checking the following:
Is the master logging to the binary log? Check with SHOW MASTER STATUS. If it is, Position will be non-zero. If not, verify
that you have given the master log-bin option and have set server-id.
Is the slave running? Check with SHOW SLAVE STATUS. The answer is found in Slave_running column. If not, verify slave
options and check the error log for messages.
If the slave is running, did it establish connection with the master? Do SHOW PROCESSLIST, find the thread with system user
value in User column and none in the Host column, and check the State column. If it says connecting to master, verify the
privileges for the replication user on the master, master host name, your DNS setup, whether the master is actually running,
whether it is reachable from the slave, and if all that seems ok, read the error logs.
If the slave was running, but then stopped, look at SHOW SLAVE STATUS output andcheck the error logs. It usually happens
when some query that succeeded on the master fails on the slave. This should never happen if you have taken a proper
snapshot of the master, and never modify the data on the slave outside of the slave thread. If it does, it is a bug, read
below on how to report it.
If a query on that succeeded on the master refuses to run on the slave, and a full database resync ( the proper thing to do
) does not seem feasible, try the following:
First see if there is some stray record in the way. Understand how it got there, then delete it and run SLAVE START
If the above does not work or does not apply, try to understand if it would be safe to make the update manually ( if needed)
and then ignore the next query from the master.
If you have decided you can skip the next query, do SET SQL_SLAVE_SKIP_COUNTER=1; SLAVE START; to skip a query that does not
use auto_increment, last_insert_id or timestamp, or SET SQL_SLAVE_SKIP_COUNTER=2; SLAVE START; otherwise
If you are sure the slave started out perfectly in sync with the master, and no one has updated the tables involved outside
of slave thread, report the bug, so you will not have to do the above tricks again.
Make sure you are not running into an old bug by upgrading to the most recent version.
If all else fails, read the error logs. If they are big, grep -i slave /path/to/your-log.err on the slave. There is no
generic pattern to search for on the master, as the only errors it logs are general system errors - if it can, it will send
the error to the slave when things go wrong.
When you have determined that there is no user error involved, and replication still either does not work at all or is
unstable, it is time to start working on a bug report. We need to get as much info as possible from you to be able to track
down the bug. Please do spend some time and effort preparing a good bug report. Ideally, we would like to have a test case
in the format found in mysql-test/t/rpl* directory of the source tree. If you submit a test case like that, you can expect a
patch within a day or two in most cases, although, of course, you mileage may vary depending on a number of factors.
Second best option is a just program with easily configurable connection arguments for the master and the slave that will
demonstrate the problem on our systems. You can write one in Perl or in C, depending on which language you know better.
If you have one of the above ways to demonstrate the bug, use mysqlbug to prepare a bug report and send it to
bugs@lists.mysql.com. If you have a phantom - a problem that does occur but you cannot duplicate "at will":
Verify that there is no user error involved. For example, if you update the slave outside of the slave thread, the data will
be out of sync, and you can have unique key violations on updates, in which case the slave thread will stop and wait for you
to clean up the tables manually to bring them in sync.
Run slave with log-slave-updates and log-bin - this will keep a log of all updates on the slave.
Save all evidence before reseting the replication. If we have no or only sketchy information, it would take us a while to
track down the problem. The evidence you should collect is:
All binary logs on the master
All binary log on the slave
The output of SHOW MASTER STATUS on the master at the time you have discovered the problem
The output of SHOW SLAVE STATUS on the master at the time you have discovered the problem
Error logs on the master and on the slave
Use mysqlbinlog to examine the binary logs. The following should be helpful to find the trouble query, for example:
mysqlbinlog -j pos_from_slave_status /path/to/log_from_slave_status | head
Once you have collected the evidence on the phantom problem, try hard to isolate it into a separate test case first. Then
report the problem to bugs@lists.mysql.com with as much info as possible.
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